When we were growing up there were bullies. Nobody liked to be
bullied, but it was a fact of life that you had to deal with kids that
weren’t very nice. Now, schools are so anti-bullying that anything that
even slightly seems like bullying is taken very seriously. At least
when we were growing up they didn’t have Facebook to upload embarrassing
videos to that would ruin a person’s life.
Check out 10 ways technology makes bullying worse.
- Facebook: Embarrassing pictures and videos can be uploaded to Facebook in a matter of a few seconds and ruin someone’s life forever. Kids do not understand the damage that something like that can do to a person. People have actually committed suicide because of events like these.
- Cell phones: Growing up we did not have cell phones. Kids these days have the ability to take pictures at a moment’s notice and sometimes not in the most appropriate places. Nude pictures of students in the shower or in the locker room have also caused suicides.
- Texting: Kids can bully by texting now. They can text everyone else at the same time something bad or embarrassing about someone else. They can also send pictures over their phone to everyone on their contact list. Bullying like this can make someone’s life miserable.
- Flip cameras: These cameras are used to shoot quick videos at close range and can be uploaded to the Internet. Kids that want to bully just have to take embarrassing videos of a student and share them with everyone. Or a video can be sent to a parent as well that would get them grounded or in trouble.
- You Tube: A lot of good things have happened to people by posting a video on You Tube, but a lot of bad stuff has happened too. People love to be the first one to dish the dirt on someone else. They witness a fight they grab their cell phone and upload it to You Tube. Or they set someone up and post what they think is a funny video to You Tube, but it’s actually very embarrassing. People don’t think they are bullying when they do this stuff, but they really are.
- Gaming systems: Many online gaming systems allow conversations between the players. Teens have reported that someone pretending to be them said mean things or embarrassing things to another person. This kind of bullying is hard to stop and hard to track. It does however cause a lot of problems for today’s teens.
- Blogs: There are teens that create blogs that post the latest gossip about people and will say nasty things about people. Teens feel that they are anonymous and that no one can tell who is doing the bullying, but there are ways to track down who’s doing it and there are some big consequences. If the bullying leads to a suicide the teen who is behind the bullying can be brought up on charges and sent to jail. Lesser sentences are losing privileges to use a computer for 2 years. Try doing your homework without a computer these days.
- Chat sites: Other sites online have chat rooms where teens can go and chat with their friends online. People can go into these chat rooms and make up a user name and start saying bad things about kids in that chat room. Many times there is a chat room that the students frequent because all their friends go there so when someone bullies in a chat room a lot of that kid’s peer group could be reading it.
- E-mail: Bullies steal identities and will sign into an e-mail account and send damaging e-mails pretending to be that teen. Inappropriate messages to a female teacher or a nasty message to the principal are all things that can really get that child in trouble and they didn’t do anything. Remind your child to keep passwords absolutely private.
- Instant messaging: Bullies will try to send nasty instant messages threatening to do something to a teen when they see them next. Or tell them that they are going to make sure that they don’t get something they want at school like a part in the play or a solo in choir. Bullying can take many forms even if it’s just telling someone that they did a terrible job on their audition or they overheard someone important say that they did a terrible job. Anything like that is going to put undue stress on that child. Make sure that your child is aware and being safe.
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